Recent content by grzrk

I ended up cracking my vessel doing a (not so attentive) 3 psi pressure transfer with a clogged dip tube. It bulged out the bottom. Worked great up until then :). Someday I'll probably buy another vessel for small batches since I still have uncracked lids...

I 'd love to know how they get that chocolate flavor myself. I grab a couple 12's of that every time I'm in Ohio or Indiana (Still no Yuengling in Michigan)

Agree a vacuum sealer is obviously best, but I have had pretty decent results dipping a hop filled ziplock bag in a bowl of water to purge as much out as possible. I'll zip it almost all the way closed with just a small opening and very carefully dip as much of the bag as I can without getting...

Great info there about insulating the base. My one keg where the base is clearly deteriorating would probably turn to mush lol. It is interesting that the headspace CO2 that is absorbed into the wort doesn't seem to be enough to affect the later fermentation. I suppose the concentration is...

When you transfer to these, do you just leave the ambient air in the headspace while cooling before pitching?

Not sure about the rubber feet and handles. The rubber on one of my keg's is already in bad shape and leaves black residue on your hands when cleaning. If that one survives then I think it'll be ok :D Purging with co2 and the vacuum situation has crossed my mind. I was going to just seal that...

I'm going to experiment with a no chill batch this winter by slowly transferring bottom up straight to a corny that has a FLOTit floating dip tube. Let it chill in the basement a day or two while I fire up a starter made with this fresh wort, then come back and pour in the yeast and ferment...

I can't believe this never occurred to me to give a try. I'm due for a fresh bucket, going to give this one a whirl!

I recently placed an order on June 29th, got an "Sorry we're behind" email and coupon on July 6, and I finally just sent an email asking about the status of my order on July 13. Three hours later on the 13th I got a shipping confirmation, supposed to arrive today. Brew day Sunday back on track...

Try Cap and Cork in Macomb if it's not too far north for ya :cool:

This is kind of where I am with it. If I don't have an empty keg and/or need a fermenter that's been in use a couple weeks, I'll typically move it to secondary. Then I call my friends over to help drain a keg and brew more beer.

I've been meaning to ask this - does anyone have a simple way to mark the bottom of bottles by scratching or etching? I'd like to date and identify bottles for tracking to keep track of those that I bought clean and new, and those that were label pulls, along with what brand they were. I tried...

My general consensus is that infection on the cold side of the ball valve is plausible but not probable. I like to spray some star-san up there before draining just because it can't hurt. :cool:

This exact scenario happens to me about every other batch. So far, so good - but as a matter of fact, my current batch in the (non-transparent) fermenter went through a non-sanitized spigot and is slated for packaging this weekend. Wish me luck lol.

Hopefully this is the right place, apologies if not. I'm working my first lager and am planning on lagering in my kegerator under no (or extremely low) pressure in a corny with the headspace cleared. Any issue then bottling some of that beer from the corny and carbing using carb drops or...